CEDU533 - Week 3

This week in class we reviewed each other's PowerPoints on what makes a website good, bad, or ugly. I found it interesting and helpful to take a closer look at the concrete reasons why we feel a particular reason about a site.

We also learned about Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which have the purpose of giving a webmaster more control over page layout and display than HTML offers. As Kristine said, "It helps put the pretty into Web pages."


In a nutshell:

Content - HTML
Appearance - HTML or CSS
Interactive -Applets and Javascript

CEDU533 - Week 2

Another week of HTML, with focus on new tags and creating tables.

We also spent time in class reviewing what makes a good page layout and which colors are best suited for certain products or services. That discussion I found to be particularly interesting - the psychology of colors and marketing principles in general have always been fascinating to me.

I had considered both Psychology and Marketing as majors in my undergrad - until I learned that they each required a master's degree before a "decent" job could be obtained. So I ended up with a B.A. in Business Management and two emphases - Marketing and Leadership........then back to school 9 years later to be licensed to teach......and now comes the Master's program....who knew?!

CEDU533 - Week 1

After our initial virtual classroom visit utilzing WiZiQ, it was time to dig deep into HTML....

What is HTML?
HTML is a language for describing web pages.
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
HTML is not a programming language, it is a markup language
HTML uses markup tags to describe web pages
HTML markup tags are usually called HTML tags
HTML tags are keywords surrounded by angle brackets
HTML tags normally come in pairs like and
The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag
Start and end tags are also called opening tags and closing tags

Though a bit obstinate at the start, I soon discovered by utilizing the cut & paste features and the helpful tutorial websites that creating an HTML document was not as difficult as I anticipated. I can see that with a bit more practice the language would become second nature and not so tedious. :)

CEDU 549 - Week 5

Okay - two hours until class time and I am quickly skimming and highlighting my notes in review for tonight's final exam, benchmark, assessment, or whatever we are calling it.

But first, a quick story....so last Saturday was my 20 year high school reunion. In large part because I switched high schools due to a family divorce, I was NOT a fan of high school (and vowed on graduation day to never step foot back on the premises)....which just happens to be the high school in which I currently work! Anyway, I was not looking forward to the reunion so I made it well known to myself and others that I was on a mission to make the night bearable by getting completely intoxicated. I succeeded - had a blast - and announced to my husband (which I completely don't remember), "Tomorrow I am going to correlate the number of drinks I am having to the amount of fun I am having!". I suspected a very positive, strong correlation. :)

Sunday came....and now it was my husband that thought he was being witty when he said, "How about instead, you correlate the number of drinks you had to how you feel today."

He laughed loudly. Not so funny to me.

Oops. As always, my stories are longer than I anticipate. So, that's it for my blog...back to a quick review. :)

CEDU 549 - Week 4

In stats this week we learned more about correlations and had some guided practice on reading correlation tables. Being a visual learner, and typically finding the reading of graphs and charts a strength of mine, my initial struggle with interpreting the tables was frustrating. After some review of the tables this week I became much more confident - it seems so easy now! We also were introduced to the Pearson and Spearman correlation formulas in class and discovered the Pearson formula is available on Excel...nice!

CEDU 549 - Stats 3

1. I sucked at the benchmark last week due to simple errors - subtracting by hand incorrectly and repeating the same formula for the mean as what was used in the prior column. Argh! I could hear the words I use with my students repeating over and over in my mind, "Always double-check your work. Always look at the big picture - does your answer MAKE SENSE considering the numbers given?" A humbling night...and one in which I have been reminded to be especially empathetic with my students who make similar mistakes.

2. As a special education teacher, learning more about standard deviation has been very helpful because I can better explain test scores of formal assessments that I use for re-evaluations to my students and their parents. Good stuff....especially since I have two Re-eval IEPS this week.

3. That's it. On the verge of burning out right now. What else do I say to my students? "Every situation that gets you out of your comfort zone and challenges you is an opportunity for you to grow as a person. Growth is good." Arghhh....must I really embrace my own advice? :)

CEDU 549 - Stats 2

Things to Remember:

* Two ways to figure out an average (mean) in Excel: =(B1+B2+B3)/3 or =average(B1:B3)

* A population consists of all members of some specified group. A parameter is a measure of a characteristic of an entire population.

* A sample is a subset of a population. It has the same characteristics as the population. A statistic is a measure of a characteristic of a sample.

* Scales of Measurement: Nominal (ex. social security#), Ordinal (in order - rank), Interval (IQ Scores), Ratio (ex. height and weight)

* Measures of Central Tendency: Mean, Median, Mode

* Measure of Variability: Range, Standard Deviation

* Negatively Skewed: tail points to the left, median is to the right of the mean, there are more higher scores

* Positively Skewed: tail points to the right, median is to the left of the mean, there are more lower scores

CEDU 549 - Stats 1

There was something comforting about stats class last week. Believe me, I am no math whiz...but it was nice for this old lady to not have any new technology thrusted upon her to stumble through - a pen in my hand and paper in front of me.....nice.

CEDU 521 - Action Research 2

My presentation is complete and I am currently working on the assessments and attachments for my action research project. They include pre/post attitude surveys, pre/post writing sample assignments, tally sheet to record student engagement levels, log to record time students spent practicing the software, a standardized writing evaluation scale (rubric) used to measure student success, and the WordQ 2 User Guide which will be used for instruction.

My guiding question is, "How will the use of assistive technology, word prediction software, impact the writing productivity of secondary students with disabilities?" I have WordQ word prediction software on my school computer and I will be training my students on how to use it to their advantage. This is something I have been wanting to schedule time to do the past two years, so my action research project is proving to be very beneficial to me and hopefully a huge benefit to my students. If the statistics show a positive conclusion, I will submit a proposal to have my department buy more licenses of this software.

CEDU520 Action Research 1

Dr. Linda Simmons is teaching CEDu520, Developing Action Research for Instructional Technology. Thus far, the knowledge I have gained from the course that I would most like to retain includes the following:

1. This was the first time that I actually entered the Stritch library to obtain scholarly articles on-line. I am glad that I was encouraged to utilize this resource because it has proven very beneficial to my research.

2. It is has been very helpful to have the Powerpoint presentation, "Action Research: What is it?" on our Wiki page. After the first face-to-face class everything was pretty much a blur due to my own level of exhaustion, to have that Powerpoint available to review helped to clear up the purpose and direction of the class and the research process.

3. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Extramural Research web-based training course “Protecting Human Research Participants” was very interesting. My husband, a high school history teacher, was familiar with The Nuremburg Code and The Syphillis Study at Tuskagee, AL, but this was a new part of history to me that I believe is important to learn about.

4. Using Educator to access the Powerpoints of other researchers was very beneficial to help me brainstorm potential ideas for my research and to understand the big picture of what needs to be done for the IRB Powerpoint.

CEDU 521 - Week 6

What have I taken away from this class?

1. Assessments. Use them. Use them before, during, and after a unit. Create an assessment timeline to go with a unit to be sure you are "mixing it up" and using them effectively.

2. Student Directed Learning. ALL students CAN do this and improve their critical thinking skills if given the right amount of guidance. Create check lists and rubrics, and have individual conferences to keep them on track.

3. Unit Plan. A well developed unit benefits both the teacher and the students.

4. Intel Thinking Tools. Worth learning how to use!

CEDU 521 - Week 5

What ongoing professional development is important for sustaining professional growth?

There is definitely no one correct answer to this question. To sustain professional growth, teachers and staff members must be willing to embrace, and districts must be willing to provide, many different professional development opportunities. Both formal and informal professional development opportunites, in and out of the school, should be used to improve the skills of the teachers.

Examples of these development opportunites include: inservice training days, continuing education classes, workshops, visits to other schools, regular collaboration within departments, joint lesson planning, peer coaching, and common planning times.

As far as what should be taught or discussed, it is important to offer opportunities in three different areas. First, content knowledge. Teachers should continuously be working at better understanding the subjects that they teach. Second, instructional strategies. Here is where I can fit my growing knowledge in the area of technology and use what I am learning in this cohort to develop new strategies to teach my students. Lastly, professional development needs to include providing teachers with knowledge about how our students learn and how to help them succeed in the classroom. Specifically with focus on EEN students, those with ADHD, our at-risk population, ELL, gifted and talented, can't forget about our EEN students on the PDD scale (they have their own special needs), students who have dealt with a death of a parent, those with substance abuse issues....wow, this list could go on and on - so I will stop. :)

Regardless of the type of professional development, it is clear that continuous learning by the teaching staff is critical to achieving our main goal of improving student learning.

CEDU 521 - Week 4

This module has helped me think about self-directed learners and the role of differentiation in the following ways...

As a special education teacher, I am used to providing differentiation in my teaching style and assignments. Understanding that students learn differently is critical to ensuring that they benefit from my instruction. Prior to this course, I did not seek out opportunities for self-directed and project based learning within the classes that I taught this year. It seemed to me that any type of project that required self-direction resulted in both my students and myself becoming frustrated and unproductive. As a result, I tended to rely on direct instruction because it seemed to work best with such a variety of ability levels. Now I understand that self-directed learning isn't unobtainable for my students, but I must provide clear procedures, checklists, feedback, and rubrics along the way. By providing this additional support my students will benefit by learning critical thinking skills. In addition, as they become more comfortable with the process they will be able to help each other along the way and become less reliant on me. I am excited to take another shot at using self-directed learning with my students next year!

CEDU 521 - Week 3

This module has helped me think about student centered assessment in the following ways:

1) I need to strive to create better, more effective assessments and use a bigger variety.
2) It reminded me that assessment is more than just tests and quizzes. Graphic organizers and checklists, which I currently use, are good assessment tools as well.
3) I really liked the assessment timeline visual and I think it is an efficient and effective way to plan the assessements for a unit.
4) An assessment strategy that I have never used before, but should have, is for my students to identify what specifically was hard for them during the unit. By doing that, we can then work together to determine how to overcome those difficulties in future projects.
5) Another assessment area that I rarely use, due to some past bad experiences, is peer feedback. However, after reading this module I have determined that there are many benefits to this assessment tool and instead of shying away from it, I should embrace the opportunity it provides for me as a "teachable moment". My students need to learn the skills of giving and receiving criticism so that they are prepared for constructive feedback/communicating with others in the real world on their jobs and in their relationships.

Just a note: I found this module to be very worthwhile.

CEDU 521 - Week 2

Digital Divide issues that you may have in your classroom setting and possible solutions.

As copied from Wikipedia: "The term digital divide refers to the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all. It includes the imbalances in physical access to technology as well as the imbalances in resources and skills needed to effectively participate as a digital citizen. In other words, it is the unequal access by some members of society to information and communication technology, and the unequal acquisition of related skills. The term is closely related to the knowledge divide as the lack of technology cause lack of useful information and knowledge. The digital divide may be classified based on gender, income, and race groups, and by locations.[1] The term global digital divide refers to differences in technology access between countries or the whole world." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide

There are a few issues regarding Digital Divide that I have in my classroom. The first, as mentioned by others, is computer access at our school. In addition to finding the computer labs booked when I would like to reserve them during the school day, it is frustrating that students do not have access to the library past 3:15 each day. The good news for me is that with the stimulus money being offered to special education departments, our request for an EEN specific mobile lab may be able to be granted this year....my fingers are crossed. Additionally, I am fortunate that I share a "suite" with four other special education teachers and between our two rooms we have four student computers available. As a result, I can schedule evening study sessions with my students who are needing assistance on projects and/or time to catch up on the assigned readings in Kurzweil for their mainstream classes. The other huge Digital Divide issue I deal with is an imbalance in skills. My students are often in "Basic" classes in their core curriculum areas where the focus is on how to improve their reading comprehension, reading fluency, and basic writing skills....technology skills definitely take a back seat. As a result, when they have to do projects for elective classes they are at a loss, fall behind, and become very frustrated....and often times a behavior issue for the regular education teacher. My solution: This summer find the curriculum and create a semester long Basic Technology course for students in my department! How soon can I make this happen?....wish me luck! :)

CEDU 521 - Week 1

What is project-based learning and how might you use it in your classroom?

Project-based learning is a teaching strategy that engages students in learning by having them investigate answers to questions that cannot be answered simply by rote learning. This type of learning helps to improve problem solving and higher-order thinking skills of students. Typically, students are welcomed to create a project based on their individual interests. As a result, teachers who use project-based learning notice increased attendance and improved attitudes toward learning.

As a special education teacher, project-based learning can be especially challenging. Many of my students have fallen victim to "learned helplessness" and are not comfortable taking the lead role in a project. Regardless, I see many benefits in this type of teaching strategy and I am looking forward to learning more about it and integrating project-based learning into my current curriculum.

CEDU 531 - Week 5

Higher Level Thinking While Creating a Digital Story

A project that I would like to do with my students is to have them each create a digital story that portrays their own strengths and ambitions. To then share these projects with mainstream teachers at the beginning of a new semester, would not only help the regular education teachers identify who my students are but the teachers would also understand the abilitites of my students more clearly. Rather than simply recalling information, to create a digital story about themselves would require my students to use many higher level thinking skills found on Bloom's Taxonomy. For example, synthesis is the fifth level on the scale and includes arranging, assembling, collecting, composing, creating, designing, organizing, and writing. These are all activities that would be required to complete a digital story. Though requiring more preparation and patience to implement, to have my students complete a project of this nature would be much more satisfying to me than positive results on a spelling test or reading comprehension quiz. Not only would they be learning new skills, but they would be creating an end product they could be proud of while also helping their other teachers to understand how special they are like I do.

CEDU 531 - Week 4

I was totally oblivious to the world of podcasting prior to this class. I work one mile from my home, sleep on vacation drives to avoid carsickness, work out with friends who like to talk a lot, and each night spend my free time listening to my 6 year old read Scooby Doo Mysteries. As a result, I don't plan to download any podcasts for personal use any time soon.

Regardless, I was quite entertained by creating my own podcast during class - check it out on the sidebar! I really enjoy learning new ways to use technology, especially when they are so easy to implement. Because I work at a high school, a large percent of my students have cell phones which will make utilizing gCast, as we did in class, a relatively simple task. My plan is to try it out with my Basic Communications class this week and have them each read their favorite creation from our most recent unit on poetry. As typical with SLD students, my class has weak written communication skills and I am anticipating that they are going to enjoy making their work available to the world without having to write it again!

CEDU-531, Week 3

Elements of Digital Storytelling

The element of digital storytelling that I can best apply in my classroom is that of emotional content. This is an element that, though others can intuitively figure out, is sometimes difficult for students with special needs to pick up on. Digital stories are an excellent tool to help students identify feelings and emotions and then also to dig deeper and identify what factors help contribute to those feelings. For example, we can discuss how the use of color, tone of voice, music, images, and pacing all contribute to how we feel about the subject. Excellent~

CEDU531 - Week 2

We had the opportunity to spend a significant amount of time during class exploring Voicethread and creating a simple digital story with the photos we uploaded this week. Joe and I put together a pleasant, five slide presentation on Central Park. After some more experimentation with this program, I can foresee using it with my communications class to do a similar exercise. I would let them choose a topic of their choice (which from recent experiences would be Ford trucks, Honda cars, Yamaha snowmobiles, LiL Wayne, or Modest Mouse) and have them upload pictures and write a script explaining them. An additional requirement may be to have each student create a comment on the other's digital story.

CEDU531 - Week 1

Cheryl Ross (9-12 Special Education)
There are a number of ways that I believe that I can use digital storytelling in my classroom. My first thought was to use it with my Basic Communications 3&4 class. As part of a semester long project, the students could begin by researching a career of interest to them. Then I would set them up with a job shadow experience and encourage them to document their visit by taking photos and collecting company literature. To complete the project, students would create a digital story of the career they researched and company they visited to inform the other students of a possible job option after high school. Another option for digital storytelling that I am excited to pursue, is to have my students document their disability in this format. Rather than provide a copy of the student's IEP or send an email simply listing accommodations, mainstream teachers could view a digital story of the student's stengths, weaknesses, abilities, interests, and allowed accommodations. To include photos of the student would create an additional impact and make the story both personable and memorable. How exciting!

CEDU-525 Week 4

To wrap up CEDU-525, Using the Internet and Web as a Curricular Resource, we spent time reviewing the lesson plans we created with our study groups and then reviewed some very beneficial websites we can access in developing and evaluating curriculum.

The site I am most excited to utilize is Rubistar. It is a tool for creating individualized/specialized rubrics that I found to be super quick and super easy. I am looking forward to creating a rubric for my job search/resume unit. Many times I grade my students on their ability. For a resume or job application, regardless of your ability level, you need to figure out a way to reach your highest potential and create an outstanding project. By using a rubric, my expectations (and those of a future employer) will be very clear.

Class time was also spent looking at sites in which we could find WebQuests. I am hopeful that I can use these sources to find a few valuable WebQuests that I can use with my students for both my current unit on job searches and my upcoming poetry unit.

Most of our Individual Assignments following the last class focused on copyright issues. This was a subject I didn't really know much about and had not spent much time explaining to my students. I found the resources we were required to review as being very beneficial in clarifying my understanding of the topic.

CEDU-525 Week 3

The focus of our in-class time this week was spent discussing the pros and cons of social networking sites and also the topic of cyber-bullying. It was interesting to hear the different personal experiences that our peers have had within their districts regarding these topics.

We also spent some time on Tapped In, a site that allows you to enter "rooms" and meet up with other people to "discuss" a topic relevant to you. It was interesting to be involved in something different and to know that the resource is available. If I return to the site again, it would benefit me to take some time to figure out how to navigate through it so that I can take advantage of all that it has to offer.

Our study team spent the majority of our time together creating a lesson on Internet Safety. We were able to find many beneficial websites and ended up needing to expand the lesson to a three day mini-unit. I am very excited because I anticipate using our lesson plan with the freshmen on my caseload during a class we call "Exploratory". Internet safety is definitely a life skill worth "exploring" with my students.

It was interesting reading about all of the professional social networking sites, including those for licensed physicians and tech professionals. I took a look at LinkIn, which is a site many of my friends are using in their current job searches in "the business world". LinkIn recommends using a site called SlideShare to post presentations and resumes, so I'm curious about that site and finding out if it would be beneficial to use in my world.

CEDU-525 Week 2

Week 2 was good for me.

The discussion on Bubbleshare and other resources of the like has motivated me to take the plunge and actually do something with the pile of maxed out memory sticks I have at home! This week I started taking pictures of my students and I am going to teach myself and then teach my Communications class how to get pictures from a memory stick onto the computer and then some options of what to do with them. (Since I am an EEN teacher, I have the flexibility with a small class to work as many practical/life skills activities into my curriculum as possible.)

I also enjoyed the discussion and demonstration of on-line quizzes. My plan is to put together a quiz for my resume unit within the next week. Based on our classroom discussion, I think I will give ClassMarker a whirl.

And last, but definitely not least, Facebook! If it hadn't been a requirement of class, it wouldn't have happened....and dare I say - after putting up such a fuss - I love it!

CEDU-525 Week 1

This week as part of our homework we were to look at Internet Scavenger Hunt examples before creating our own. The site that I chose to explore was http://homepage.mac.com/cohora/ext/heart.html, which asked over 15 questions regarding the heart. This was an excellent site to learn from because it incorporated many different types of sites that contained information about the heart. There were sites with simple drawings, medical drawings, videos, movement, sound, and lots of color. The lesson focused not only on the workings of the heart but also how and why to keep the heart healthy. My favorite part of the scavenger hunt was the requirement at the end to create a crossword puzzle of the heart and circulatory system. It gave specific directions on how to create the crossword. I am excited to create my own crossword to use with my students in the area of job searches and resumes.

After viewing this lesson, I created my own Internet scavenger hunt that I called Resume Ready which has the students search for basic answers to questions such as "What is a resume?" Following each question there is a link with either an article, video, or presentation to view in order to answer that question. I will be trying it out tomorrow with my Basic Communications 3&4 class.